The Wishing Pool and Other Stories: Tananarive Due in conversation with Edward Austin Hall

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Charis welcomes Tananarive Due in conversation with Edward Austin Hall for a celebration of The Wishing Pool and Other Stories. In her first new book in seven years, Tananarive Due further cements her status as a leading innovator in Black horror and Afrofuturism.

Tananarive Due is the master of Black horror, even teaching a class where Jordan Peele guest-lectured. So her new collection, The Wishing Pool, out in mid-April, is a major treat, full of major scares. Due excels at twist endings but also brilliantly creates an atmosphere of creeping dread in which you know something terrible is coming. The Wishing Pool is helpfully divided into four sections, and each feels like a movement in a symphony. There are classic tales of horror, then a series of stories set in a Florida town where the swamp tends to swallow people up; the final two sections shift to science fiction about post-apocalyptic futures. (These last sections include pandemic stories, written before 2020, which hit harder now.) Due shows just how much territory she can cover in one short book and just how versatile terrifying tales can be.

Washington Post: American Book Award-winning author Tananarive Due's second collection of stories includes offerings of horror, science fiction, and suspense--all genres she wields masterfully. From the mysterious, magical town of Gracetown to the aftermath of a pandemic to the reaches of the far future, Due's stories all share a sense of dread and fear balanced with heart and hope. In some of these stories, the monster is racism itself; others address the monster within, each set against the supernatural or surreal. All are written with Due's trademark attention to detail and deeply drawn characters. In addition to previously published work, this collection contains brand-new stories, including "Rumpus Room," a supernatural horror novelette set in Florida about a woman's struggle against both outer and inner demons.

TANANARIVE DUE is an award-winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. Her stories have been featured on LeVar Burton Reads and Realm, and she is an executive producer on Shudder’s documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. Due and her husband/collaborator, Steven Barnes, wrote for Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone and for Shudder’s anthology film Horror Noire. They also co-wrote the Black Horror graphic novel The Keeper, illustrated by Marco Finnegan. Due and Barnes co-host a podcast, Lifewriting: Write for Your Life!

Edward Austin Hall co-edited Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond, acknowledged in a front-page NPR.org story headlined “Sci-Fi Has Changed A Lot In The Past Decade—These 7 Reads Will Show You How.” Hall’s novel, Dread Isle, was published in 2020. His novelette Green Treacheries appears in the 2022 anthologyTerminus 2. Currently he is editing some transcribed (and fiery) civil rights–related sermons by the Reverend Doctor C. T. Vivian that are in search of a publisher.